ROCKFORD — Mayor Larry Morrissey wants to move the often behind-the-scenes discussion at City Council committee meetings into the open.

Doing so, however, would require changing the frequency of City Council meetings from weekly to every other week, something some aldermen worry could delay time-sensitive work such as giving the green light to new businesses.

The current schedule makes it difficult at times for residents and aldermen to know what happens in committee meetings, where most of the detailed discussion takes place, Morrissey said.

That’s because the City Council’s three committees, which split up aldermen to deal with issues like development, regulations and finance, all meet at roughly the same time on Mondays. The result is that residents, journalists and aldermen must scramble among three different rooms to catch snippets of discussion in each committee.

“Our current, inherited structure is disjointed and confusing, to put it bluntly,” Morrissey said during his State of the City address last week.

He said the format makes it impossible for aldermen and the public to fully engage in the details of city work.

“This also builds stress and distrust as council members may try to get filled in on the important work of the other committees, but don’t have the time to do so, or they don’t feel comfortable that they have done their due diligence on a given matter that comes before the council,” he said.

Morrissey wants City Council meetings to take place every other week. On the off weeks, all aldermen would meet as a committee of the whole to do the detailed work that usually takes place in the three separate committees. The committee of the whole meetings would be televised the way City Council meetings are now.

The format is used in other Illinois’ communities such as nearby Belvidere.

For the typical Rockford resident, the new schedule would provide an opportunity to see the whole council openly vet issues and challenge proposals in advance of a scheduled vote.

“It makes it easier for people to see in entirety everything that’s going on,” Ald. Tim Durkee, R-1, said. “It’s a better design.”

City Council members discussed potential changes to the format last year, but ultimately held off. Morrissey reignited the discussion by including it in his State of the City address last week and bringing the matter up Saturday during a special council retreat. So far, there’s no official proposal scheduled for a vote that would change the long-standing structure.

Ald. Tom McNamara, D-3, agrees that the structure must change in order to increase the efficiency and transparency of council work. But he does not want the council to meet less frequently.

Page 2 of 2 - McNamara proposed an option last year that would have committee meetings at 4, 5 and 6 p.m., with council meetings at 7 p.m. on Mondays. The goal was to keep weekly council work while allowing aldermen and residents to attend each committee meeting if they choose.

“Now is not the time to begin having council meetings less frequently,” McNamara said. “We have 12.5 percent unemployment and high violent crime. We have worked extremely hard to gain momentum and we finally are at a stage where we have a lot in our hopper. We need to work harder, smarter and more efficiently now.”